Headed for Hershey - Next week I'll be traveling to Hershey, Pennsylvania to perform a site visit on a conference property we are considering as a venue for our 2018 event. While there I'll be the guest of producer-member Kenny Lisle and the Energex team and will visit their manufacturing facility in Mifflintown. I don't know that I'll ever tire of visiting our members' production facilities. Seeing people at work manufacturing quality products in rural places reinforces everything I believe about this industry. I'm also very excited to visit appliance manufacturer-member Hearth & Home Technologies pellet appliance manufacturing site in nearby Halifax as well. While I was fortunate enough to visit a pellet boiler manufacturing facility in Austria several years ago, I've never toured an appliance manufacturing facility in the United States. Finally, it looks like I'll also have an opportunity to tour a local specialty hearth retailer while I'm there. In just two very busy days, I'll have a look at the entire pellet manufacturing and distribution supply chain. 

Wood Pellets and Iran - As I write this, online news outlets are dissecting President Trump's withdrawal from the Iran deal and market observers are suggesting that this will only accelerate the increase in global crude oil prices. Candidly, over the course of the last few months, I've found myself wondering if the industry leaned too heavily on the economic advantage argument for wood pellets when crude oil (and heating oil by extension) prices were really high in 2014 and really, really high in 2008. The economic advantage offered by wood pellets in $100-plus crude oil markets is so significant that I wondered if the other, non-economic arguments for wood pellet heating weren't polished and refined because the economic argument was so strong. In 2008 when crude soared past $140/barrel, over 140,000 appliances were sold and in 2014, the last time crude was over $100/barrel nearly 90,000 appliances were sold. While I'd argue against an over-reliance on the economic argument for a wood pellet appliance purchase, I'm certainly happy to see it back in our value proposition.

Operation 100k as a Means of Focus - As the notion of setting a public target for a new floor for wood pellet appliances began to emerge after some conversations with the PFI board I began to have great confidence in its appeal to our producer members. What I didn't count on was how useful I would find it when talking to industry partners not directly involved in the manufacture of pellets. Here is one example of the week. Yesterday I received an email from Rick Vlahos, the Executive Director of the Hearth, Patio and Barbecue Education Foundation and the National Fireplace Institute. Not knowing of Rick or the HPBEF nor the NFI, I picked up the phone and gave Rick a call. We had a terrific conversation, but the important thing for me was that when in the conversation it was my turn to talk about PFI I found it very easy to explain our strategy and what we'd like to accomplish. Moreover, it also allowed me to ask him questions about whether he thought some of the work he's doing at his respective organizations could contribute to the goals outlined in Operation 100k.